The Government doesn’t get it
June 26th, 2009 Posted in EducationThe government has finally decided to respond to the Royal Society of Chemistry‘s petition for improvements in school science standards. And guess how it does it? Well, by totally avoiding the point of the petition
Listen, government, you really don’t get it. Schools need more money, yes, but throwing money at education without actually using your brains is the wrong solution.
The RSC made one simple demand, and it’s something that the government completely failed to grasp.
We need a higher standard of science taught in schools.
Throwing money at the problem won’t solve the fact that the curriculum is pants, many of the teachers are underqualified to teach the subject, the course doesn’t encourage any level of understanding above just ‘learning for the exam’, and after all that, the exams are trivial.
Yes, Gordon, you’re going to have to bite the bullet on this one – for once, we’ll have to accept that the number of students passing exams will go down. Because, you see, the number of students passing exams is not an indicator of how good the teaching has become – it’s a very clear indication that the exams are inadequate.